Learn how to add Matter.js physics into your game in part four of one of the most comprehensive, well written and illustrated tutorials on tilemaps.

Michael Hadley has been writing a series of tutorials on using tilemaps in Phaser 3. In part 4 he covers getting acquainted with Matter.js, so you can set up a world with realistic physics.

"As I was writing up this post, I realized that there were just too many new concepts to pack into one post, so I’m splitting this into two posts. This one will introduce the Matter physics engine by itself, and then we’ll bring in Phaser, tilemaps and mapping tile bodies in Tiled. In the second post, we’ll dive into Matter’s collision logic and build a platformer.

A quick sidebar: this whole tutorial series is tilemap-centric, so of course we are going to use tilemaps here. That said, the game/art/tool/etc. that you may want to create might not need a tilemap, e.g. this pinball game made with Matter. Don’t feel constrained to tilemaps just because we are using them here! You’ll learn the basics of Matter along the way here, so you’ll still get something out of following along even if you don’t use tilemaps."

Michael was the developer responsible for coding most of the tilemap API inside of Phaser 3, so you can be sure this is a detailed and well researched tutorial, not just another 'export your map from Tiled' affair.

As with the other parts in the series, the tutorial is extremely well written, with plenty of great illustrations and explanations of the concepts behind tilemaps and how they work in Phaser. As you'd expect, the code is all available in GitHub too, and there are copious embedded examples. This is another masterclass in both tutorial writing and the use of tilemaps, so I'd urge anyone who plans to use them to read it.